United States: A new study says three things can increase the chances of having a severe stroke. These are:
- Smoking
- High blood pressure
- Atrial fibrillation (a heart problem)
These risk factors not only make strokes more likely, but they also make them more dangerous and harder to recover from, according to researchers in a study published on November 13 in the journal Neurology.
“Stroke often has a potential of resulting in disability or death while there are so many risk factors that may be controlled by change of lifestyle or by taking medication,” notes Catriona Reddin, a geriatrician with the University of Galway in Ireland who led the study.
“Our findings highlight the need to more aggressively control potential risk factors for stroke including high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation and smoking to help avoid terrible, disabling stroke,” Reddin said in an interview.
As reported by the HealthDay, cute strokes leave a person partially or completely disabled to the extent that they cannot walk or feed themselves, according to the study. These patients then need to be nursing dependent for the rest of their lives.
So, for the study, the researchers have followed about 26,712 participants from 32 countries with an average age of 62. Of this group half experienced the independent risk factor of a stroke, 4,800 experienced a severe stroke and 8,600 had a mild to moderate stroke.
After adjusting for other risk factors, researchers found that:
The patients with atrial fibrillation – an irregular heartbeat – were 4.7-fold more likely to suffer a severe stroke and 3.6-fold more likely to have a minor to moderate stroke as the patients without the condition.
High risk persons had 3.2 odd of suffering a severe stroke and 2.9 odd of suffering a mild/moderate stroke compared with normotensive persons.
They found that smokers were 1.9 times more likely to be admitted for a severe stroke and 1.7 times more likely for a mild/moderate stroke than nonsmokers.
“Our study underlines the need to manage elevated blood pressure levels, which is the single largest reversible risk factor for stroke in the world … said Dr Reddin. “This is true for LMIC countries that see higher and rising incidences of high BP and stroke, at younger populations.”